U.S. Aides Hint Afghan Voting May Be Put Off

The Bush administration has begun suggesting that Afghanistan's elections scheduled for June may have to be postponed because of security problems and the failure to register enough voters.

Administration officials said in recent days that security conditions remained dangerous or at least uncertain in a third of the country, hampering registration so badly that only 8 percent of eligible Afghan voters have been enrolled. Among women, only 2 percent have registered.

The United Nations has said at least 70 percent of eligible voters should be registered for the elections to be considered successful. That leaves only four months to achieve a daunting objective at a time when registration workers are avoiding large swaths of the country that are considered unsafe. Afghanistan has about 10.5 million eligible voters.

''I am reasonably confident that we can get enough voters registered and provide security -- it won't be perfect -- that at least the presidential election can take place in June, or maybe July,'' said an administration official. But he added that security would have to improve to reach that goal, and that this might not happen.

President Hamid Karzai and the Afghan government bear the responsibility for deciding whether the elections must be postponed, administration officials said. But the United States is also expected to play a decisive role in advising the Karzai government about what to do in that regard.

Mr. Karzai is said to be determined to hold at least the presidential election on time, in part because he expects to win. He is also said to be haunted by the memory that civil war erupted in the early 1990's when Burhanuddin Rabbani, a onetime anti-Russia guerrilla leader, refused to step down as president.

Under the Constitution that was agreed upon in early January, Afghanistan is supposed to try to schedule both presidential and parliamentary elections in June.

The administration official said it was very likely that the parliamentary elections, as opposed to presidential elections, would be postponed, possibly until next year, because even beyond security concerns, there were difficulties in setting district boundaries, choosing candidates and organizing political parties for the parliamentary elections. Registration is also hampered by Afghanistan's extensive illiteracy and the fact that perhaps most cities and towns do not have streets or addresses.

Many other experts say that in discussions with administration officials, there is a growing sense that the goal of holding prompt elections of any kind this year is receding.

Bush administration officials insist that American politics are playing no role in the decisions about whether to push for elections, but there is little doubt that President Bush would like to claim an electoral success in Afghanistan as he runs for re-election himself.

Similarly, the administration is pushing for a transfer of sovereignty to Iraq in June, another goal that some in the administration say is being influenced at least partly by the domestic political calendar.

Countering the American desire for an election in Afghanistan in June, many European and Japanese officials and private organizations involved in Afghanistan's reconstruction are in favor of putting off the elections out of fear that chaotic voting may do more harm than good. They also have influence with Mr. Karzai.

Lakhdar Brahimi, a former United Nations coordinator in Afghanistan and the current United Nations envoy to Iraq, is on record as saying elections cannot be held quickly in either country.

Last month, Mr. Brahimi told a closed-door Security Council session that Afghan elections could not be held in June, said an official who was there.

Mr. Brahimi told the National Press Club two weeks ago that ''a huge effort will indeed be necessary'' to have ''free and fair elections'' on schedule. He also predicted that the parliamentary election should probably be held in the spring of 2005. Last week, in Iraq, he was trying to convince Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that viable elections could not be held there until the end of the year.

But the administration is resisting a postponement in Afghanistan even as it backs Mr. Brahimi's assessment for Iraq.

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''If you read all the statements the administration is applying to Iraq -- that security and logistics do not allow for quick elections -- you'll see that they apply also to Afghanistan,'' said Barnett Rubin, a scholar on Afghanistan who is director of the Center for Preventive Action at New York University.

''At least Brahimi is consistent,'' Mr. Rubin added.

Administration officials say attacks in the unsafe areas are being carried out by forces of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a dissident Pashtun commander in the 1980's uprising that drove Soviet forces from Afghanistan.

Mr. Hekmatyar's forces at that time were subsidized by the United States and Saudi Arabia. Much of the resources for the fighters now come from drugs, which account for half the country's gross domestic product.

The insurgent groups active now are mostly in the southern and eastern parts of the country, especially on the border with Pakistan, where pro-Taliban and pro-Qaeda elements are believed to be sheltering Osama bin Laden. The Afghan authorities have demobilized 2,700 former soldiers of the country's many militias operating under various warlords, but many more remain active.

It is unclear whether Mr. Karzai, who was elected president in a grand assembly called a loya jirga, will run for re-election uncontested, in a vigorously contested general election or with token opposition. The hope of American officials is that he will be re-elected with broad support among Afghans.

In part because Mr. Karzai is expected to win a presidential contest, parliamentary elections pose a much tougher security problem and a more delicate political quandary, administration officials say. Legislative elections, they say, could breed violence and intimidation by warlord groups that might not mobilize in the presidential contest, where they are likely to be marginalized.

The warlords, most of them ethnic Tajiks from the north, had intially been the power behind Mr. Karzai's presidency, though as the balance of power has shifted their independent clout has decreased and Mr. Karzai has either disarmed their groups or has wooed them into his corner.

But the Tajiks, Uzbeks and others who supported the American invasion and who have been marginalized in recent months want parliamentary elections to occur at the same time as presidential elections, reasoning that they have a better chance to wield power through the parliament.

''If you have a presidential election without a parliamentary election, the opponents of Karzai will say that the constitution is being abrogated and Karzai is trying to become a dictator,'' said Ahmed Rashid, an author of books about the Taliban who has spent many years writing about Afghanistan.

Mr. Rashid has asserted, most recently in an article in The New York Review of Books, that the United States is pushing the election for Mr. Bush's political advantage.

''You cannot have an election in Afghanistan on an agenda set in Washington for the benefit of presidential elections in the United States,'' he said, adding that in his own travels in the country it became clear that security was too chaotic to hold elections any time soon.

Even many neutral experts and military commanders say a larger force is needed to beef up security before elections. At present, security in Afghanistan is provided by 8,000 to 9,000 American troops, plus 2,000 British, Canadian and other forces and perhaps 5,000 security forces protecting Kabul and Kunduz in the north under the guidance of NATO.

There is a plan for 32 small teams of security forces in different parts of the country to help with registration, but administration officials acknowledge that it has been hard recruiting outside forces to serve in Afghanistan.

Correction: February 20, 2004, Friday A front-page article on Monday about the prospect for elections in Afghanistan misstated the name of the New York University research group directed by Barnett Rubin, who compared the Bush administration's policies on Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the Center on International Cooperation. (He formerly directed the Center for Preventive Action, part of the Council on Foreign Relations.)